Vaughn Palmer: Federal agencies pass the buck on where a marine oil terminal could be built

Opinion: Can a container port and an oil terminal coexist in the already crowded marine neighbourhood of Roberts Bank?

CEO Peter Xotta of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority was asked about the recent plan to develop a one-million-barrel-a-day oil terminal at Roberts Bank. Could the container port and the oil terminal “coexist” in the already crowded marine neighbourhood of Roberts Bank? “Obviously the Roberts Bank Two project is much further along,” replied Xotta, before deferring to the federal major projects office.

“There’s lots of discussion to be undertaken with respect to the energy project that you’re referring to, and we’ll be working with the major project office on the details around that. We don’t have a lot further to say at this point.” Nor does anybody else.

“Roberts Bank is already the location of two artificial islands — one is B.C. Ferries’ Tsawwassen terminal, the other is the Roberts Bank Superport that contains the Westshore coal terminal and Deltaport, already Canada’s largest container-handling facility,” as Hoekstra reported in The Vancouver Sun last Friday. The Phase 2 expansion of the superport, advanced this week, will add a new 1.3-square-kilometre island. The Tsawwassen Ferry terminal extends to the edge of the U.S. border at Point Roberts.

North of the coal and container port there’s Westham Island and the mouth of the Fraser River. In between the ferries, the containers and the coal, are the residential neighbourhoods of the Tsawwassen First Nation. So, to repeat, where will they squeeze in an oil terminal?

Hoekstra did not make much progress getting an answer. Natural Resources Canada referred him to the port authority. The port authority said the federal and Alberta governments had not involved it in discussions on the oil terminal, therefore it knew nothing about the impact on the new container terminal.

“It’s important to keep in mind that these are two separate projects,” said a port representative. “Alberta’s proposal is still at a conceptual stage and details regarding route and infrastructure have not been provided to us.” Nor did Alberta have anything to say for attribution.

But the province has already posted its expectations for an oil terminal spreading over several square kilometres of land to accommodate 15 oil storage tanks and a two-berth loading facility for very large crude carriers, a.k.a. “supertankers.” The container terminal is indeed a lot farther advanced than the oil terminal and no wonder: Environmental review began more than a decade ago. Monday the port announced the major contractor for the expanded terminal.

Thursday, Ottawa referred it to the major projects office. The latter is expected to expedite approval of remaining permits for a start of construction next year. The announcement by federal Transport Minister Stephen MacKinnon included several promises to protect the marine environment and orca population.

The environmental assessment of the Roberts Bank 2 Terminal project acknowledged it will have “irreversible adverse effects.” Federal authorities greenlighted construction with 370 conditions, crafted to mitigate those environmental impacts. All that for expansion of a container port.

Imagine what regulators will demand from a facility piping a million barrels of Alberta oil a day into very large crude carriers. The container port expansion entailed lengthy consultations with more than two dozen B.C. First Nations. It also drew a court challenge from the Washington-state’s Lummi Nation.

Several B.C. First Nations have already protested the lack of notice on the plan to locate an oil terminal in or near their territory. Expect more in the weeks and months ahead. No wonder nobody wants to talk about where they’ll put the terminal.

No point in asking the B.C. NDP government for an opinion, never mind that the terminal will be in its territory, politically speaking. Premier David Eby staked out a healthy distance from the project at the July 2 news conference where he and Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a federal-provincial accord on development of the North Coast transmission line, the Massey Tunnel replacement, and other projects. Eby got what he wanted when the prime minister kept the moratorium on north coast tanker traffic.

In return, the premier admitted that B.C. has no constitutional authority to oppose a pipeline. (“We learned this the hard way on the last pipeline.”) However he made one other thing clear: “This agreement does not require us to support any pipeline proposal from Alberta.”

In short, as the premier would have it, the planning, building, financing and delivery of the oil project is up to Alberta and its federal government partner. And where to put the oil terminal itself? That may be the biggest challenge of all.